Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink

Who is this book for?

This book is for anyone who is interested in motivation and goal setting, both in business and in their personal life. Drive is an unconventional look at business environments, management styles, mindset, parenting, and productivity. Pink offers strategies to empower employees and restructure management by capitalizing on an individual’s intrinsic motivation rather than extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation, Pink argues, will change business innovation as we know it. It moves beyond the carrot and stick approach of old into in a new motivation wave he calls Motivation 3.0.

Introduction: The Puzzling Puzzles Harry Harlow Edward Deci p.1

-An incentive changes how some views a task. They are likely to see the task as “work” and “not fun”, killing creativity.

-An incentive, such as cash, technology, or coupons for good grades does more harm than good.

Part 1 A New Operating System

Chapter 1 The Rise and Fall of Motivation 2.0 p.15

-Reward the good and punish the bad doesn’t work anymore

-There is a higher drive than the drive to get rich

-Open source projects (Wikipedia, Apache, Firefox, Linux, and many more) are more successful than their for-profit counterparts.

-“Social businesses”

-“Purpose maximizes”

-People tend to make poor decisions because of an emotional rationalization, such as fair play. Or an emotional attachment, such as hanging on to a bad investment longer than we should.

-Harlow’s three drives

Chapter 2 Seven Reasons Carrots and Sticks (Often) Don't Work… p. 34

-Carrots and sticks achieve precisely the opposite of their intended aims.

-There is a difference between what science knows and what business does